Interviews with the Temporally Displaced

By Shawn Wayne Langhans

Spontaneous Human Teleportation, otherwise known as Unexplained Temporary Temporal Displacement is an event that very few have experienced and for those that have they are not oft believed. Stephon King is one of those seeking to meet those unfortunate souls who for unknown reasons have impossibly slipped between one space to the next.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Planet Bizarro
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915546302

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Shawn Wayne Langhans

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real-life persons or events is purely coincidental.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by UK copyright law.

Contents

. Chapter

Title Page

1. Chapter 1

2. Interview Twelve

3. Interview Eleven

4. Interview One

5. Interview Thirteen

6. Interview Fourteen

7. Interview Fifteen

8. Interview Sixteen

9. Interview Seventeen

10. Interview Eighteen

11. Final Interview

12. II

13. Interview Two

14. Interview Three

15. Interview Four

16. Interview Five

17. Interview Six

18. Interview Seven

19. Interview Eight

20. Interview Nine

21. Interview Ten

22. III

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

About the Author

Other Titles from Planet Bizarro

This novel is dedicated to Audrey Schoonmaker, Toni Leprich and Julie Elver. Thank you for believing in me, especially when I didn't believe in myself. This story is also dedicated to Bobaba Beebe and Ronald Lee Langhans.

Interviews With the Temporally Displaced

Shawn Wayne Langhans

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Planet Bizarro Press

Where you from, toots? asks the person behind the espresso machine, ragging it down with a dampened cloth. Maroon. The cloth, not the speaker.

I tell the barista, New York initially. California lately.

Figured you weren’t from these parts. What’ll it be? I can feel his eyes on my hair.

I order a large coffee, plain and boring, handing the intuitive individual exact change. I tip the man two bucks and mosey on towards a seat in the middle of the café with my back toward the walls and my feet toward the door. My eyes scan the crowd, and I quickly confirm that each person in the room has exactly the normal set of limbs. Two legs. Two arms.

I am early.

Here I sit in a nondescript coffee waiting for Vandermeer. I chose this location for two reasons. First, the guy did not give a first name in our e-mail correspondence. A red flag in my book. Second, the last few amputees I’ve met with I would not have met with privately had I known how the outcome would play out. Meeting in a public place meant I was less inclined to need to worry about my own safety.

In my experience, those that have become temporally displaced are usually shaking or quivering with fear when they start talking about it. It. Those that have lost limbs from it, they’re usually jumpier. Angrier. More unpredictable.

A half hour goes by, and the barista walks up and cleans the table next to me. Is that the same maroon rag or a new one? An old one?

Waiting for somebody, hun?

I am. He was supposed to be here by now.

Vandermeer is late.

Well, I hope he hasn’t disappeared on you.

The barista winks at me. I smile at the thought; those who’ve disappeared are the people I am interested in. I sip my coffee. It is lukewarm. Normally at this temperature I would leave, but I didn’t sleep well last night. This coffee is necessary, especially considering my interview with the Strauss daughters tonight. Not to mention the long drive from Lufkin to Dallas.

I hear the bell above the door ring, chiming for my attention. I turn and almost immediately, not-quite instantly, recognize the man by his demeanor. And by the count. Two legs. One arm.

He seems lost. Having agreed to meet with me, he knows why he is here. Still, he is out of place. He acts like a rabbit whose ears caught wind of something the eyes cannot yet see. Do they react to the first noise, or in fear? Not in fear, but something else.

I realize he is looking for me, though I admit it’s not fair to assume every amputee walking into a coffee house is looking for me. Funny.

He stands a few inches taller than myself, though probably not quite six feet. He is bald, though wearing a long beard with flecks of gray through it. I can’t help but notice the sheen on his shaved head. Greasy almost. His clothing is mostly non-assuming, ketchup-stained jeans and a t-shirt, outside of the jarringly bright yellow jacket, with both sleeves rolled up just above the elbow. On his right arm there is a tattoo in large bold letters clearly stating MY ONE TRUE LOVE: running vertically down his forearm, faded almost blue at this point. No jewelry, watches, or rings on his right hand. His left arm, however, is missing. Just below the elbow.

I raise my hand, and ask, Vandermeer? which evokes a smile from the man. I notice now the jacket he is wearing is actually a rain jacket. Strange, because there isn’t a cloud in the sky. He looks relatively fit, excluding the impressive beer gut. As he walks toward me he loses his slouch. I misjudged his height earlier. He is easily six two, six three. A trucker’s slouch, by my guess.

And you must be Stevie King? I correct him. It’s Stefon. I ask him if he wants any coffee or a bagel. He declines. I ask him if he minds the recording device. He says he does not. He sits down in front of me, I sip my lukewarm coffee, and we start the interview.

Interview Twelve

Blank Vandermeer

It’s nice to meet you in person. Would you please state your name, and age if you don’t mind.

Vandermeer, age forty-eight.

Your full name?

Okay, but don’t laugh. My first name is Blank. Blank Vandermeer.

Blank, eh? Did your mother have a sense of humor when they were naming you?

Uh, yeah, I s’pose momma musta. That’s why she named me ‘Vivian Violet Vandermeer’. No joke. I guess she were expectin’ a girl or something ‘cause she named me after my grandma and aunt, both of whose was dead before I’s born. Don’t know why my dad never argued. Maybe he liked that Johnny Cash song a bunch and thought it would toughen me up some.

I write down A Boy Named Sue, which, if I recall correctly, would have come out a few years after Vandermeer was born.

Hm. Would you say it did?

School was tough alright. I was in many a fist fight. Won some, lost some. Anybody ever tried to call me by those pansy names got one warning, then a knuckle sandwich. I used to be quite the fighter back when I was on the football team. So, my dad said if I didn’t like it I could change it legally down at the court house, only I had to pay for it and I had to do all the legwork, so to speak. All my friends just called me by my last name so it made the most sense, plus it wouldn’t be disrespectin’ my father and all, what with keepin’ the family name

When I was filling out the paperwork, the lady clerk said I had to have a first name. I said I just wanted the one name deal what like Madonna had. Or Cher, you know. The lady informed me then and there that them two examples had a first name and a last name, as was the rule in these states. Sarkisan. Cher Sarkisan, that’s what she told me. I don’t remember Madonna’s last name.

Anyways, I says to her Okay so can’t I just make my name ‘Vandermeer Vandermeer’ to which she says no, though I could put a dash in there, uh, heathenate?

Hyphenate.

Yeah that’s the one. They say I can hyphenate my name if I want it to appear twice, but I can’t have the same first name as well as last. They said it confused their computers and databases and what have you. Mind you this is the late eighties we’re talking about when computers didn’t have the horsepower they’ve got these days. Anyways I wasn’t so patient back then, so I just wrote down Blank.

The lady clerk sighed, but a few days later I got my first piece of proof that my name weren’t Vivian nor Violet no more. After that, it was just a matter of paying up and mailing copies of the new name all over the town. I think somewhere I might still gots the newspaper clipping where they put my old name and new name on in case someone wanted to protest it or some such nonsense.

Heck, not long after that I got a construction job and boy howdy did they love to poke fun at the name Blank. I wouldn’t have lasted a week had they known the names my momma gave me.

He leans in closer and begins to whisper:

Also, if’n you don’t mind, leave out all the parts about my birth name. It’s a small city and I wouldn’t want that one spread around.

I notice his accent seems forced or exaggerated. I write this down on my pad of paper. He thinks I am writing down everything he is saying. Really I’m just jotting down notes on his behaviors. His facial expressions. He is performing for me.

Little involuntary ticks and jerks that people don’t know they do. I do this because I am trying to catch people in their lies. So far, everything this guy says seemed to be very truthful. Vivian.

Of course not. My aim here is not to destroy the credibility of any of those I interview. I like the singular name. That’s very interesting. I wanted to change my name at one point. Back in college. Almost went through with it too. It was all the paperwork that deterred me last minute.

Oh yeah, why’s that? Steven’s a common enough name.

Well, it’s Stefon. My problem was its similarity to Stephen King.

Who’s that?

The author. Writes a lot of horror fiction.

As in books? Nah, I haven’t read a book since the tenth grade. He do any movies I might know.

There’ve been dozens of adaptations of his work. The Shining, Pet Semetary, Carrie, It, uh, Shawshank Redemption, just to name a few.

Ain’t seen them. Did you know that those Twilight movies was all books first?

It’s this comment that makes me realize the nervousness in his eyes from earlier was something much more primitive than fear.

So as far as I can tell, this man wasn’t suffering from any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. My guess is Vandermeer here is the type of manly man ‘That wouldn’t be caught dead in a joint like this.’

I did. Anyways, the reason I wanted to interview you because of your arm. You said in the e-mail you would be comfortable talking about what happened to you. As I’ve mentioned in the e-mail correspondence, I believe you are a victim of Spontaneous Human Teleportation, or Unexplained Temporary Temporal Displacement. Do you mind elaborating on the morning you were temporally displaced?

He stares at me blankly. There is nothing but dull gray brain matter behind those dumb blue eyes, but nothing is firing in there.

When you, in your words, were teleported into the floor.

Oh yeah! Now there’s a story!

With his right hand, he tugs at his earlobe. It’s a quick gesture. I’m sure he doesn’t realize it.

So this was back in ninety-four, middle of August. You don’t sound like you’re from these parts, but let me tell you it was a real scorcher that day. I was working with Lehman and Sons Concrete, even though I wasn’t one of Big Al’s Kids. We were pouring the foundation for that big bank down the street. I’ll show it to you if you’ve got time!

Of course.

Anyways, me and Bill were aiming the chute while Lil’ Al was sitting there, smoking a cigarette, and all of a sudden I remember tasting, like, electricity or something in my mouth. At first I thought maybe I was strokin’ out. That’s how my dad went. Said everything tasted like static or burnt hair, then he just keeled over and died right there at the dinner table. So I’m thinking about that, and I close my eyes, just for a second.

Next thing I know, I feel a whush, like a big ol’ gust of wind or something. And it weren’t even no windy day, that day. I open my eyes and I found myself twenty feet away, laying on the ground. Now I’m all confused, like, and I push myself up. At first everything seemed fine, until Bill came running up to me, hollerin’!

I remember him screaming, Your arm! Vandermeer, your arm! but I didn’t pay no attention to that because I saw that when he was runnin’ over to me, ain’t nobody was aimin’ the darn concrete chute. Now Lil’ Al is screaming because concrete’s just pourin’ all over the place, all willy-nilly, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna lose this job. It was a good job, see, I was making good money at the time, had a nice lady, was doing pretty good for myself at twenty-four if I say so myself.

So I’m running back, yelling at Bill to get back to the chute but he just stood there all stupid, so I brush past him and go to grab the chute before Big Al see’s us ruining the floor, except when I go to grab it I can’t feel it. And that’s when I look down and saw this.

He aims his left arm at me, which makes me flinch because for a moment I think he is going to punch me with his nub.

And that’s when I passed out. I fell face-first into the wet cement, and when I woke back up the whole jobsite was shut down. There was some of the Mexicans there giving me water, while Big Al and two of his three boys were staring at the area where I had come to. As in, where I had teleported to.

I looked back down at my arm, and saw that it was still missing. But it wasn’t hurtin’ or nothing, it just wasn’t there.

I write down his pronunciation of teleported, phonetically. Telly-ported.

Some people call it phantom limb.

Yeah but I don’t believe in no ghosts, and my limb wasn’t no phantom. My boss and Bill and Al junior were staring at it, alright. I walked right over to them and saw it. Or what I could see of it, anyways. It almost looked like a cut of beef that was flush there with the floor.

Now I know what you’re thinking.

What’s that?

You’re thinking I just stuck my arm in some wet cement, wait for it to dry then lopped it off.

I laugh, hoping that it doesn’t seem unnatural.

It had passed my mind, yes.

But the problem is that where I woke up after that electricity taste filled my mouth, that chunk of foundation had set the week earlier. It was as hard as a rock. If not harder, I don’t know what they make that concrete out of but hot darn it was well past set, and now there was just a little bit of my arm meat poking out. Just seeing that damn near made me faint again. Now I’m a big guy, and I ain’t afraid of much, but when I saw Bill take a knee and poke it, I freaked a bit. What he said scared the living bejesus out of me.

‘It’s still warm.’

Once again I looked at my arm, now a friggin’ stump, and felt where my elbow ended and my forearm should’ve been. Except it wasn’t. Again, it looked like a chunk of ham with two little bones in the middle ‘cept there weren’t no blood. But it was damn warm alright.

Big Al had Ricky, the youngest Lehman, drive me to the hospital. The kid was shaking worse than I was because I guess he was staring at me when I poofed from one place to the next. I tried to explain to the doctors that I teleported into the ground and they must have thought I was nuts. They couldn’t explain it, I couldn’t explain it, but if Ricky wasn’t there I probably would’ve been locked in the looney bin!

Yeah, Ricky vouched, and the doctors were visibly agitated. I can’t remember the word they used, but they said that it weren’t bleeding because the wound had been burnt shut.

Cauterized?

Yeah that’s the one. I always got that one confused with the one where they lop your willy off.

Castrated.

Smart boy! Anyhow, they said the wound done cauterized somehow, but I would have been at